What's Laura Reading Today?

Month: February 2009

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Operation Teen Book Drop 2009 is coming up fast! This is a great opportunity to do some outreach in your community. Read all about this wonderful program at Readergirlz.

I always love to hear about programs designed to bring more male reading role models into the lives of children. This sounds like a great one – hat tip to Confessions of a Bibliovore. And Jen Robinson’s book blog points to another one here that specifically encourages fathers to read with their kids. Love it!

Anne Ursu’s Cronus Chronicles series is super-fun – and a great suggestion for your Percy Jackson fans. Now the first book in the series is a play! This really makes me wish I was up in Minnesota. (Hat tip to Kurtis Scaletta – whose new book is high on my to-read list!)

I’m always really curious about the decision-making processes that other librarians use when doing collection development. Jennifer at Jean Little Library has some thoughts up about why she purchases certain materials over others. It’s fun to hear what’s popular in other libraries, too!

Jennifer Brown, one of 2009’s YA Debutantes, has started a fun new feature at her blog. She’ll be posting “lunches” with the main characters from some upcoming YA books. The first two are up already, and they’re a riot.

Oz and Ends has a couple of great posts this week about graphic novels in libraries – the tough question of how libraries shelve them and how publisher choices make shelving tough. I’ve recently started the process of trying to shelve our graphic novels by series instead of by author/call number, so this was a timely set of articles for me. Maybe they’ll inspire me to actually get going on this project.

A book of lesson plans about social change that are based on hip-hop fiction? Awesome!

Pinot and Prose notes an upcoming movie based on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. This has serious potential for some very cool special effects. And seriously, check out this cast list. Mr. T? Color me intrigued!

At Wild Rose Reader, a great round-up of booklists, resources, and suggested books for Women’s History Month.

The Book Aunt wrote my very favorite post of the last week – a thoughtful and joyful celebration of anarchy and imagination in children’s books. This one is a must-read.

A great new event in the Kidlitblogosphere – Share a Story – Shape a Future. Starting on the 9th, a group of bloggers will be sharing practical suggestions for encouraging reading. This looks like one to keep an eye on.

At I.N.K., a great post to share with parents about nurturing young authors in the home.

I love this list of the best creepy houses in children’s literature at The Spectacle Blog. Anybody got more to add to the list?

Just more proof that Philip Pullman is smarter than the rest of us: he’s quite the art critic! I listened to this talk just out of curiosity about Pullman giving a talk on fine art, but I was drawn in pretty quickly.

I have an ulterior motive for reviewing How to Ditch Your Fairy: writing a review gives me a good excuse to post the book’s amazing paperback cover. Go ahead and take a minute – get a real good look at that sucker. Take that, Tinkerbell! Now, we all know what they say about books and covers. But we’re going to ignore that for the moment – I’m giving you permission to judge this one. Because this book is very funny, a little bit subversive, and just sweet enough for some bright purple cursive script.

If you live in New Avalon and you’re unexpectedly good at something, you’ve probably got a fairy. It could be something amazing, like Rochelle’s clothes-shopping fairy. It could be something mostly useless, like a loose-change-finding fairy. Or it could be something that gets you unceremoniously stuffed into the back of a massive hockey player’s car every afternoon, like Charlie’s parking fairy. Charlie doesn’t have a car. Charlie doesn’t even LIKE cars, and she sure is sick of the smell of gasoline that seems to follow her around. When Charlie finds out that her arch-enemy Fiorenze is trying to get rid of her all-boys-like-you fairy, they hatch a plan to make a switch.

New Avalon is just different enough to make things interesting in Larbalestier’s world – and Steffi, the love interest, is conveniently new to town. His presence both provides a way to add some exposition about the many quirks of New Avalon, and also gives a voice to the readers’ questions and frustrations about the local customs. Steffi makes a great voice of reason when everyone around him goes on about the Ours – New Avalon’s local celebrities – or when the rules and restrictions at Charlie’s school seem way over the top. He’s also helpful for translating the slang, which I found sometimes clever and sometimes just distracting.

Charlie attends the local sports high school, where calorie counts are mandatory for all students, discipline is tight, and getting too many demerits means missing game time. And Charlie absolutely thrives on all of this. It was one thing that made her feel very different from characters in many YA novels, where creativity and a quirkiness are the traits that are glorified much of the time. Some people prefer having rules to follow and high standards to strive for – and it’s nice to see one of those people show up in a book every once in a while.

The novel initially raised a lot of wonderful questions about the fairies. For one thing, not everyone in New Avalon believes that they exist, and no one really knows what they are, where they come from, or why some people have them. There seems to be some religious aspect to the fairies – people who don’t believe in them are not likely to have one, and are sometimes called “agnostics.” Fiorenze’s mother is a fairy expert, and Charlie and Fiorenze are guided by her extensive research. But Tamsin’s research is not just practical – it is ethical as well. She brings up some questions about the possible consequences of switching fairies. I was intrigued by a lot of these questions, and I wish they had been explored a little bit more – they mostly fall by the wayside as the story’s action takes off.

In the end, this was a good light read that I thought had the potential to be something more. But don’t let that take away from the fun of the story. It’s well worth reading for the luge scene alone!

Alex and the Ironic Gentleman is not about a little boy named Alex. Nor is it about a gentleman who uses irony. It is about Alex Morningside – who is a girl, thank you very much – and her quest to rescue her sixth grade teacher from some very nasty pirates. Along the way, Alex has one surreal adventure after the next – from a mysterious train ride where one person disappears after every meal, to a chaotic movie set where Alex must cajole the star giant octopus into acting his part, to a massive and wonderful hotel with no guests.

Alex is a delightful heroine. She’s always an active participant – this is a girl who knows how to make things happen, instead of waiting for things to happen to her. And her complete indifference when people assume she is a boy is refreshing. As the narrator puts it, “it wasn’t that she wanted to be a boy or anything, it was simply that she didn’t see much difference in being treated as a girl or boy. Because, after all, everyone is just people.”

Adrienne Kress has a way with words. Her delightfully droll asides can only be described as Lemony Snicket-esque. And like in Mr. Snicket’s books, the narrator of Alex and the Ironic Gentleman is directly addressing the reader with witty wordplay and little bits of additional information. It’s a narrative device that is charming in the beginning of the story, and really serves to draw the reader in. I was delighted to find that as the tone got a little bit grating, the author backed off. When the action really gets going, the narrative asides and bits of backstory come further apart and get out of the way of the story.

This is a book with a funny sense of time and place – while it reads like a historical adventure novel, little bits of the modern world find their way into the text. The laptops and automated refrigerators felt like an anomaly in the world of the story. But in this strange book, throwing the reader for a loop is the norm – as the little old ladies of the innocent-seeming Daughters of the Founding Fathers’ Preservation Society will attest.

Tons of good information and resources about graphic novels at the new site Get Graphic from the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. Great site design, too. And Graphic Novel Reporter caught up with a few librarians about how graphic novels are used in their collections. (Hat tip Fuse #8. And please click through there to see MT Anderson playing Twister. Mesmerizing!)

Where to shelve the street lit? Seems like someone’s asking this question at least once a month. Which is a good thing – there’s no easy answer, and it depends on your community and collection. Most of ours is in the adult section, but as the money allows I’ve been adding some to YA. Our teens are certainly reading it!

Cool! At first I thought that this was like the crank radios used in Africa, which can be used without a power source of any kind, but it looks like it does need batteries. But still, opportunities for more access are always welcome. Check out the blog of Literacy Bridge, the nonprofit group that created these talking books.

Ms. Yingling talks about her ordering process, and how she keeps a particular reader in mind for every book she buys.

At Interesting Nonfiction for Kids, a great roundup of astronomy resources and books for celebrating the International Year of Astronomy. Our summer reading program this year is space-themed, so I’ll definitely be coming back to this!

With the Rihanna and Chris Brown story in the news lately, we’re hearing more about teenage attitudes towards domestic violence. And a lot of it is very disheartening. YPulse shares some thoughts about how the hip hop community can work to prevent domestic violence, and includes a couple of great resources to share with teens.

This nifty site will provide an rss feed of new library materials coming into your local public library. Looks like it only supports a limited number of libraries right now – the Boston Public Library is not currently supported – but this may be one to keep an eye on. (Hat tip Lifehacker)

I recently enjoyed Don Wood’s graphic novel Into the Volcano. On his website the author has posted some storyboards to let the reader inside his writing process. (Hat tip Gail Gauthier)

I love Kathleen Edwards. Now, that might seem like a non sequitur at the beginning of a post about Melina Marchetta’s newest YA novel, but here’s my story: last night I was on my way to a Kathleen Edwards concert at The Paradise Lounge. I stopped down the street to grab some Thai food before the show, and put this book on the table next to my (delicious) Tofu Drunken Noodle. I was about halfway through, and absolutely loving it. By the time I finished my dinner it was about time for the opening act to start. And I like Last Town Chorus, I really do, but gosh it was tough to put this book down. So I slipped into a coffee shop, figuring I could read for another forty-five minutes or so and still have plenty of time to catch the second set. By the time the barista tapped me on the shoulder to tell me that they were closing in five minutes, it was pretty clear that my evening was not going as planned. I spent the rest of the evening getting funny looks from other riders on the red and green lines while I wept openly over the last few chapters of Jellicoe Road. There are not many books that I would skip a Kathleen Edwards concert for, but this one is definitely on that short list.

Jellicoe Road is certainly a stylistic departure from Melina Marchetta’s other wonderful books, Saving Francesca and Looking for Alibrandi. But when you get down to it, they are about many of the same things – the family you are born into and the family that you create, a search for identity, breaking down the walls between people. Taylor Markham is feeling lost in her life, as she has since her mother left her alone on the Jellicoe Road when she was eleven years old. But her schoolmates are expecting her to lead their turf war with the Townies and the Cadets, all while she is negotiating a tumultuous relationship with the leader of the Cadets. Taylor’s recurring dreams and a confusing story found in her guardian’s house provide a key to Taylor’s past, as well as to the story of the conflict.

I’ve heard from a lot of people that the first half of this book was a struggle for them, and I didn’t have that experience at all. While I absolutely agree that the second half of Marchetta’s book is where the novel finds its heart and soul, I really enjoyed trying to decipher the two threads of the narrative and imagining what the connections between the past and present could be. A careful and curious reader will find clues that point to many of the eventual connections, and when the stories finally do come together, it is absolutely revelatory. So much more than I could ever have imagined. And well worth missing what was probably a great concert.

D.J. Schwenk is one of my very favorite characters in YA literature, and I thought we were never going to see her again after Dairy Queen and The Off Season. But no! According to Kristin Cashore, there’s going to be a third D.J. Schwenk book! It’s coming out this fall, and it’s called Front and Center. How is this the first I’ve heard of it? There’s sneak preview available on Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s website. I’m unbelievably excited about this.

Thinking about character development? Love the Muppets? Siobhan Vivian shares an awesome article about the development of some of the most famous Muppets. Gonzo’s original name was Snarl the Cigar Box Frackle. And while I don’t know what that means, I do know that it’s awesome.

This article on the demise of the suburbs made me think of Paper Towns. The author’s solution to the declining suburban population is creating walkable communities – and local branch libraries should be a big part of that. Shared community spaces and resources like libraries should be at the center of any plan that addresses this problem.

Trisha at the YAYAYAs wants to know where all the YA literature in translation is hiding.